In the News
- The Sun Emits an M5.9 Solar Flare
- 06.08.13 – The Solar Dynamics Observatory captures the sun emitting a M5.9 class, a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:49pm on June 7, 2013.
- Noctilucent Clouds Get an Early Start
- 06.07.13 – The early start of the 2013 season appears to be caused by a change in atmospheric “teleconnections,” connections between different layers of the…
- NASA's IRIS Mission to Launch in June
- 06.04.13 – Understanding how energy travels through the lowest layers of the sun's atmosphere is the goal of NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph scheduled to launch on June 26, 2013.
- NASA Invites Media to Space Weather Enterprise Forum
- 05.31.13 – NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will deliver the keynote address at the annual Space Weather Enterprise Forum Tuesday, June 4, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Auditorium and Science Center, located at 1301 East-West Highway in Silver Spring, Md.
- NASA's MMS Team Assembles Final Observatory
- 05.30.13 – On May 20, 2013, the MMS mission team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reached an unprecedented milestone: completing the fourth of four observatories, all built for a single mission.
- IRIS Mission Readies For a New Challenge
- 05.29.13 – In late June 2013, NASA will launch a new set of eyes to offer the most detailed look ever of the sun's lower atmosphere, known as the interface region.
- Sun Releases Slow CME
- 05.26.13 – On May 26, 2013 at 3:24 p.m. EDT, the sun erupted with a non-Earth directed CME traveling at 550 miles per second.
- Auroras Visible in Continental U.S.
- 05.20.13 – Coronal mass ejections that accompanied X-class flares early last week, arrived at Earth over the weekend and sparked a geomagnetic storm and aurora.
- IRIS Mission Readies For a New Challenge
- 05.20.13 – NASA is getting ready to launch a new mission to observe a mysterious region of the solar atmosphere that may be crucial to understanding what powers space weather.
- NASA's STEREO Detects a CME From the Sun
- 05.17.13 – On 5:24 a.m. EDT on May 17, 2013, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space.
- Impacts of Strong Solar Flares
- 05.13.13 – Some people worry that a gigantic “killer solar flare” could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible.
- IRIS Q&A with Robert Carvalho
- 04.30.13 – Robert Carvalho is one of two flight controllers for the IRIS mission, and is helping design, develop and integrate flight controller software tools.
- NASA's Swift Sizes Up Comet ISON
- 03.29.13 – The Swift satellite observed a comet that may become one of the most dazzling seen in decades when it rounds the sun later this year.
- SORCE: A Decade in the Sun
- 03.29.13 – NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite has been providing data on the sun's irradiance for 10 years.
- Solar Wind Energy Source Discovered
- 03.08.13 – Using data from an aging NASA spacecraft, researchers have found signs of an energy source in the solar wind that has caught the attention of fusion researchers.
- Solar Cycle Update: Twin Peaks?
- 03.01.13 – 2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max, but solar activity is much lower than expected. At least one leading forecaster expects the sun to rebound with a double-peaked maximum later this year.
- Van Allen Probes Discover a Surprise Circling Earth
- 02.28.13 – Shortly after the Van Allen Probes launched to study the radiation belts around Earth, they saw something no one had ever seen before: a new configuration, showing an extra, third belt extending out into space.
- Van Allen Probes Discover a New Radiation Belt
- 02.28.13 – Earth's radiation belts were one of the first discoveries of the Space Age. A new finding published in today's issue of Science shows that we still have much to learn about them.
- NASA's NuSTAR Helps Solve Riddle of Black Hole Spin
- 02.27.13 – Two X-ray space observatories, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, have teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a black hole with a mass 2 million times that of our sun.
- NASA Hosts Media Telecon About Black Hole Studies
- 02.25.13 – NASA will host a news teleconference at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST), Wednesday, Feb. 27, to announce black hole observations from its newest X-ray telescope, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray telescope.
- NASA Announces Media Briefing on New Van Allen Probes Results
- 02.25.13 – NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST, Thursday, Feb. 28, to discuss new observations from NASA's twin Van Allen Probes, which are studying Earth's radiation belts. The briefing will be held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Kossiakoff Center, 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd., in Laurel, Md.
- Six Years of THEMIS: Understanding the Magnetosphere
- 02.19.13 – In THEMIS's sixth year in space, it is helping to show how even small variations in the magnetosphere can sometimes cause extreme space weather responses, helping scientist map and predict events in this complex system.
- The Sun Produces Two CMEs
- 02.07.13 – In the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, the sun erupted with two coronal mass ejections or CMEs that may glance near-Earth space.
- WISE Feels the Heat from Orion's Sword
- 02.05.13 – The tangle of clouds and stars that lie in Orion's sword is showcased in a new, expansive view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
- Explaining the Ribbon in Space Discovered by IBEX
- 02.05.13 – Using NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), scientists have devised the best model yet for the appearance of a vast ribbon of neutral atoms that curls through the boundaries of Earth's solar system.
- Building Four Spacecraft for One Mission
- 01.31.13 – An unprecedented mission is being built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The center is simultaneously building four identical spacecraft for the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission due to launch in late 2014.
- SDO Provides First Sightings of How a CME Forms
- 01.31.13 – On July 18, 20012, scientists used NASA's SDO to see for the first time the formation of something they had long known was at the heart of many eruptive events on the sun: a flux rope.
- Our Eruptive Sun: Free Lecture at NASA Goddard
- 01.30.13 – The public is invited to a free event on Feb. 13 to experience ‘Our Eruptive Sun: The Causes and Consequences of Space Weather,’ by Dr. Phillip Chamberlin, Research Astrophysicist in the Solar Physics Laboratory at Goddard.
- Sun Shoots Out 2 Coronal Mass Ejections
- 01.24.13 – One of the two slow-moving ejections from Jan. 23 is Earth-directed. In the past, CMEs of this speed have not caused substantial geomagnetic storms.
- NASA Telescope Observes How Sun Stores and Releases Energy
- 01.23.13 – A NASA suborbital telescope has given scientists the first clear evidence of energy transfer from the sun's magnetic field to the solar atmosphere or corona. This process, known as solar braiding, has been theorized by researchers, but remained unobserved until now.
- Why NASA Observes the Sun in Different Wavelengths
- 01.22.13 – Specialized instruments in ground-based and space-based solar telescopes, observe light far beyond the ranges visible to the naked eye. Different wavelengths convey information about different components of the sun.
- IRIS Spacecraft Is Fully Integrated
- 01.18.13 – NASA's next Small Explorer mission, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), which will study the little-understood lower levels of the…
- New Sunspots Producing Space Weather
- 01.14.13 – On Jan. 13, 2013, at 2:24 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. The CME left the sun at speeds of 330 miles per second and is expected to impact Earth around Jan. 16.
- NASA's SDO Has Plenty of Content for Ultra HD TVs
- 01.14.13 – A new kind of television made headlines at the 2013 annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January: Ultra High Definition TV. The TV needs content and NASA's SDO has four months worth of sun movies for them.
- Cluster Finds Turbulent Eddies May Warm the Solar Wind
- 01.08.13 – A new study of data obtained by the European Space Agency's Cluster spacecraft may help explain why the flow of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields from the sun, the solar wind, is hotter than it should be.
- Solar Ballet on the Sun
- 01.03.13 – NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this solar eruption on Dec. 31, 2012, as it rises and falls with the grace and polished movement of a ballet dancer.
